Kid Ory Biography Biography Edward "Kid" Ory was born in Laplace, Louisiana on Christmas Day (December 25th) in 1886. As a child, he often played many homemade instruments, so it was plainly seen that this kid had the desire to pursue music. However, he did not start playing on the trombone originally. He started as a banjo player, and then switched to the trombone. However, Mr. Ory's early experience with the banjo really influenced his style on the trombone. He has been thought of as one of the originals in the "tailgate" style of playing the trombone. To tailgate means to play a line of rhythm that actually sounds like it is underneath the trumpets and coronets of the orchestra. What Mr. Ory brought to jazz in this stage of his life was almost like a throwback to old ragtime and cakewalk bands, before jazz really took shape. Between the years 1912 and 1919, Mr. Ory led one of the greatest bands in the New Orleans area.

His band was composed of many future jazz greats, such as King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, Sidney Bechet, and Jimmie Noone. These future greats really shaped the the Hot Jazz style in the coming years. After 1919, however, Mr. Ory 's health failed him. He was advised by his doctors to move to a place where the climate was a lot dryer than New Orleans. He moved to Los Angeles, California, where he put together a new group of musicians that he recruited from New Orleans. Here in California, he formed the Original Creole Jazz Band (a.k.a. Kid Ory's Brown-Skinned Babies, Spike's Seven Pods of Pepper Orchestra, and the Sunshine Band). Through 1922, this band played in California. The band released in this time the first jazz recordings made by an African-American band! Two of the more famous recordings are "Ory's Creole Trombone" and "Society Blues." In 1925, Mr. Ory moved again, this time to Chicago. Here, he played quite a bit with King Oliver, Louis Armstrong's Hot Five (and later Hot Seven), and Jelly Roll Morton.

However, during the Great Depression (1930-1939), he retired for the first time. He actually ran a chicken ranch with his brother during this time! However, in the 1940's, the dixieland style of jazz went through a revival period. He started up the Kid Ory Creole Orchestra once again in 1943, and Mr. Ory played until 1966 when he retired. During this period of his life, he worked with Barney Bigard (clarinet) and Bunk Johnson (trumpet). He even worked in movies at this time ("Crossfire," "New Orleans," and "The Benny Goodman Story")! After retirement, Mr. Ory died in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1973, at the age of 87. He left behind a great legacy! He will always be known as a great innovator on the trombone as well as one of the most powerful musicians in jazz! Kid Ory | Entries | KnowLA, Encyclopedia of Louisiana Kid Ory This photographic portrait shows Louisiana trombonist and bandleader Edward "Kid" Ory.

Learn more » Trombonist and bandleader Kid Ory, a pioneer of the traditional New Orleans jazz style, played a key role in the New Orleans Revival of the 1940s. He is credited as the leader of the first black New Orleans jazz band to make a recording, and Ory’s recording of “Creole Song” in 1944 is the first documented performance of a jazz-informed song sung in Creole patois. During his long musical career, he worked with jazz greats such as Louis Armstrong , Joseph “King” Oliver , Jimmie Noone, Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton , and Sidney Bechet . Early Life Born December 25, 1886, Edward “Kid” Ory was raised on the Woodland Plantation in LaPlace, in St. John the Baptist Parish, where he began his musical career. Much can be learned about the complex commingling of ethnic diversity and racial ambiguity in Louisiana culture by inquiring into the ancestry of Ory’s parents. His father was a white man of French ancestry named Ozeme John Ory. His mother, Octavie Devezin, was Afro-Spanish and Native American.

In other words, if Kid Ory was filling out a census return, he would be checking all the boxes and asking for extra pages, because he represents the full spectrum of ethnic and racial diversity in one person. Under most nineteenth-century protocols, Ory would have been considered an octoroon, meaning that he had one African-heritage grandparent. After the implementation of segregation, however, that meant he was legally black. Ory’s musical career began on the Woodland Plantation with a rag-tag group of musical “wannabes,” performing at fish fries on homemade instruments. By 1910 he had saved enough money to buy a trombone and moved to New Orleans with his Woodland Band, just in time to fill the vacuum resulting from jazz cornetist Charles “Buddy” Bolden ’s nervous breakdown and incarceration in the Jackson State Asylum in 1907.

Within a few years his original “running pardners” had all been replaced by such future jazz stars as Joe Oliver , Louis Armstrong , Johnny and Baby Dodds, Jimmie Noone, and Sidney Bechet , who were attracted by Ory’s innate understanding of what it took to satisfy the public and his ability to outsmart other band leaders in getting jobs. A case in point was his strategy at cutting contests, where jazz bands riding around town on horse-drawn furniture wagons would meet and compete for the crowd’s approval. Ory found that using a truck in such encounters provided an advantage, especially when the noise of the engine frightened the opponent’s horses, causing them to buck, which distracted his musical adversaries. Of course, with a motorized wagon, he could also outrun competitors when necessary, particularly if they were gaining the upper hand. Time spent in the streets on wagons or trucks had other implications as well. Ory became internationally recognized as the progenitor of tailgate trombone style, so named because the instrument’s slide could easily become a lethal weapon in the wrong hands, thus necessitating positioning the trombonist at the tail end of the wagon, away from the other musicians.

Edmond Souchon once remarked that Ory had the “foulest” tone of any jazz trombonist he had ever heard, which he meant as a compliment. In New Orleans-style jazz , imprecision can be a value unto itself, as long as it is done with feeling. Life Outside Louisiana After becoming the most popular jazz bandleader in the city, Ory left for California in the fall of 1919, at the height of his success, for health reasons—purportedly due to emphysema. In truth, he fled because of a business deal gone sour with a Sicilian nightclub owner. When the cornet player Joe Oliver moved to Chicago in 1918 after being arrested several times on the job with Ory, young Louis Armstrong took his place. The band performed at Pete Lala’s Theatre on Claiborne Avenue, drawing so well that Ory decided to run the show himself. He rented Economy Hall (also known as Cheapskates’ Hall) in Tremé, along with nearby Cooperators Hall, which he kept dark, to eliminate any competition. But Lala was well connected, and soon the police started showing up at Economy, harassing the customers waiting to get inside.

That is when Ory learned that one can become too smart a businessman, and he was fortunate to escape with nothing worse than a bruised ego. Shortly after Ory made his Nordskog recordings in Los Angeles in 1922, Armstrong left New Orleans to join Joe Oliver in Chicago, making recording history himself with the Creole Jazz Band in 1923. When he organized his own band, the Hot Five, in 1925, he sent for Ory, his favorite trombonist. It turned out that Armstrong wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Between 1925 and 1928, Ory recorded simultaneously with Armstrong, Joe Oliver’s Dixie Syncopators, and Jelly Roll Morton’ s Red Hot Peppers, making him the busiest session trombonist in the Windy City. He saved his money during the 1920s, and when the Depression lowered the curtain on the Jazz Age, Ory returned to California, where he worked as a postal sorter and ran a chicken ranch. He was retired from music altogether, except when the trombone was needed to intimidate errant chickens that refused to behave or lay enough eggs.

It seemed like the end of the line, but, in fact, it was not. Career Revival Cleaning out chicken coops was a particularly odious assignment for a trombonist who had ridden the recording boom of the 1920s to stardom with Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton. Ory had certainly never been one to eschew hard work—after all, he had grown up on a sugarcane plantation—and he knew that every season brings change. In fact, fortune was about to give the Kid the sweetest comeback imaginable—a return to the spotlight. What changed his circumstances dramatically was a movement inspired by “hot” record collectors and writers to reignite interest in “authentic” New Orleans jazz as an antidote to the popularity of swing and the emergence of bebop in the 1940s, a phenomenon usually referred to as the New Orleans Revival. The rediscovery of trumpeter Bunk Johnson by the authors of Jazzmen in 1939 got the ball rolling and, by the time it reached California in 1943, some major show business figures were interested in promoting the Revival for reasons of their own.

Orson Welles, who had scared the nation with his “Martian invasion” radio stunt War of the Worlds in 1938 and then redeemed himself with the critically-acclaimed film Citizen Kane in 1941, had transferred his Mercury Theater radio show to Hollywood, and he was looking for a hook that would generate publicity. He enlisted the services of his friend Marili Morden, the beautiful proprietress of the Jazz Man Record Shop in Los Angeles, to find a band that could deliver “the original sounds of jazz,” and she came up with Ory. Welles later delivered a rather negative assessment of the purists who followed the New Orleans Revival: “There's something of the opium eater in your jazz cultist. His enthusiasm affects him like a drug habit, removing him, it seems, from the uninitiated and less paranoid world about him and encouraging many of the attitudes of full-blown megalomania.” Of course, this did not stop him from using Ory as his pied piper to boost rating for his radio shows. In 1943 Ory and some of his musical friends had already accompanied Bunk Johnson at a concert at the Geary Theater in San Francisco.

A year later he had his own radio show (sponsored by Standard Oil, in addition to the Mercury Theater radio stints) in Los Angeles that gave him widespread public exposure. Soon he was in demand at nightclubs throughout the city, which Morden wrote about in a letter to her friend Alma Hubner, the daughter of the Chilean ambassador to Australia: “It is now quite impossible to have anything resembling solitude when listening to Kid Ory’s band—in fact, one is lucky to get a seat within listening distance … many people have been telling me for months that the band was fine but wouldn’t draw enough business for anyone to risk hiring them. Other night club owners … are now trying to lure them away from the Jade.” People could not help but remark that the Kid was doing quite well for his age (almost 58). In 1944 Ory also resumed recording activity, including songs that he knew from childhood but had overlooked in his earlier career with Armstrong, Oliver, and Morton. He began with “Creole Song” (a.k.a.

“C’est l’autre Can Can,” a story about a gossip in Storyville ) for Nesuhi Ertegun’s Crescent label, an independent record company that referenced both Ertegun’s love of the Crescent City and his Turkish heritage (his father was the Turkish ambassador to the United States). It was the first documentation of a jazz-informed song from the early days sung in Creole patois, which was Ory’s native tongue, and it wouldn’t be the last. Over the course of the next few years, he recorded “Blanche Touquatoux” (about a Creole woman trying to pass for white and failing), “Eh la Bas” (a celebration of overindulgence), and “Creole Bo Bo” (about a well-deserved spanking, although not in Storyville). Such material lent substantially to Ory’s exotic appeal as a Creole (and it helped to keep the Creole language alive), representing a French connection to jazz that was abiding and basic to his identity. Not even Bunk Johnson could match that. In the 1950s Ory made trips to France in order to see where his family came from.

He was treated royally and made a short film called L’Homme de la Nouvelle Orléans there in 1958. (This was not his first film; he had previously appeared as part of Louis Armstrong ’s band in the film New Orleans, released in 1947). But perhaps the strangest twist in his saga came late in the following decade, when a tune he had written and recorded in the 1920s, “Muskrat Ramble,” was recreated as “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” by Country Joe and the Fish and became a huge hit as an anti- Vietnam War protest song. The “Muskrat Ramble” stop chorus was transformed into a flocking chant: “Well, it’s one, two, three, What are we fightin’ for? Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn, next stop is Viet Nam! Well, it’s four, five, six, Open up the pearly gates…” Because it was prominently featured in the film Woodstock (1970) and on its soundtrack album, the reworked version generated massive revenue, none of which went to Ory.

By this time the trombonist had curtailed performance activity, limiting his agenda to occasional concerts at Disneyland. He retired to Hawaii but made one trip back to the Crescent City to perform at New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in 1971—his first return since leaving in 1919. It was a long overdue homecoming, intended as a reunion with Armstrong, who had to cancel due to failing health. Gaunt and weak from ill health himself, the Kid sang but played only a little, yet it was enough to satisfy his fans. Advertising headlines for the festival had read, “Come to New Orleans and Die (Happy),” which is what Ory did less than two years later, on January 23, 1973, in Honolulu. His travels had taken him very far from LaPlace, indeed, but he left a musical legacy that the world continues to enjoy. Written By Bruce Raeburn , Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University Published » May 20, 2011 | Last Updated » February 25, 2014 Cite This Entry Chicago Manual of Style Raeburn, Bruce.

"Kid Ory." In KnowLA Encyclopedia of Louisiana, edited by David Johnson. Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 2010–. Article published May 20, 2011. MLA Style Raeburn, Bruce. "Kid Ory." KnowLA Encyclopedia of Louisiana. Ed. David Johnson. Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 20 May 2011. Web. 19 Dec. 2016. Kid Ory — Free listening, videos, concerts, stats and photos at Last.fm kid ory Edward "Kid" Ory (1886–1973) was a U.S. jazz trombonist and bandleader. ( see other Kid Ory bands ) Ory was born on 25th December 1886 in Woodland Plantation, near LaPlace, Louisiana. He started playing music with home-made instruments in his childhood, and by his teens was leading a band well regarded in South-East Louisiana. He kept La Place as his base of operations because of family obligations; on his twenty-first birthday he moved his band to New Orleans, Louisiana.

Kid Ory @ All About Jazz Read more Edward Ory was born in LaPlace, Louisiana, on Christmas Day 1886. As a child, he began to make music on homemade instruments. He soon was playing banjo, then switched to trombone. Ory went on to introduce and develop the “tailgate” style, in which the trombone plays a rhythmic line underneath the trumpets and cornets. By 1912 he was leading one of the best-known bands in New Orleans. Among its members at various times were several musicians who later were highly influential in jazz development, including Sidney Bechet, Johnny Dodds, Jimmy Noone, King Oliver, and Louis Armstrong. In 1919 Ory moved to California, forming a new band in Los Angeles, Kid Ory’s Creole Orchestra. They played steady engagements, up and down the coast. This band was the first black band from New Orleans to record. Under the name Spikes’s Seven Pods of Pepper, they recorded “Ory’s Creole Trombone”, and “Society Blues”, for the Sunshine label. The name came from the Spikes brothers who owned the label, and sold the records out of their music store in Los Angeles.

Kid Ory also recorded two blues records for them one with Ruby Lee, and the other with Roberta Dudley, this time using the name Ory’s Sunshine Orchestra. After five years, in 1925 he moved to Chicago, where jazz was hot and by the end of the ‘20s had become a prolific jazz recording artist. He not only played and recorded with King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton, but became a member of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, and Seven, thereby appearing on some of the most influential jazz discs of all time. His energetic “tailgate” trombone was also a key feature of several other recording groups, including the New Orleans Wanderers and Bootblacks, and his featured solos, such as “Muskrat Ramble,” incorporated some of the tricks he had mastered in his youth. Returning to California in 1930, he went into the chicken farm business with his brother, and did quite well at that. He gigged round Los Angeles in the 1930s, but after playing on television and discs in 1944, his band became the centre of the West Coast 'revival' and he was celebrated as a founding father of jazz.

He started to record again with his revived Creole Orchestra, and between 1944 and 1949 did scores of sessions for the Columbia, Crescent, Decca, and Exner labels. During the ‘50’s he toured Europe, played Newport, and recorded for Verve, highlighted by a ’59 tribute to W.C. Handy. He continued with studio work into the ‘60’s, retiring in 1966. Kid Ory died in Hawaii on Jan. 23, 1973. In 1986 he was inducted into the Jazz and Big Band Hall of Fame. Kid Ory was a pioneering figure in the propagation and promotion of early jazz. His move to California was significant as soon after he was followed by others from New Orleans, and then it was on to Chicago for the historic sessions there. He was an integral member of the original hot bands of the period, and a key player in the evolution of the trombone in jazz.

Source: James Nadal Masters of Louisiana Music: Edward "Kid" Ory - OffBeat Magazine OffBeat Magazine BORN: December 25, 1886, LaPlace, Louisiana DIED: January 23, 1973, Honolulu, Hawaii Within hours of turning 21, Laplace native Kid Ory took the train to New Orleans, where he immediately found musical employment in the Storyville district. Three weeks later, the King of the Tailgate Trombone sent for his band, which was an instant hit in New Orleans. When trumpeter Joe Oliver left the band, Ory gave teenager Louis Armstrong his first professional gig, after ordering young Satchmo to buy his first pair of long pants. There are many ideas on how jazz started. Most of the theories have to do with Congo Square, leftover instruments from the Civil War, the meeting of Creoles, Africans and Italians, Buddy Bolden, and Storyville. However, integral to the genesis of jazz is the presence and music of Edward “Kid” Ory. Edward Ory formed his own pickup “spasm” band while a child in Laplace, Louisiana playing homemade instruments in the late 1800s.

He was invited to play with Buddy Bolden, but his sister wouldn’t let him. He moved to New Orleans and played around Storyville. Then when Storyville closed in 1917, he lived in Chicago and Los Angeles. He recorded the first jazz songs performed by an African-American band. He defined the sound of the trombone with his “tailgating” style on Louis Armstrong’s Hot 5’s and Hot 7’s recordings. Then, after retiring for several years, his comeback in the 1940s helped spur the new fascination with Dixieland and traditional jazz as well as contribute terrific new music to an old genre. Kid Ory was born Edward Ory on Christmas Day, 1886, in LaPlace, Louisiana. His was a well-to-do Creole family which spoke Parisian French. His father owned the Woodland Plantation, and none of his relatives were musicians. His first instruments were ones that he made himself, including a five-string banjo made from a tin bucket, thread, and fishing line, a guitar made from a cigar box, and a bass from a wooden soap box. Ory picked up the music bug early.

In an oral history from 1957 now at the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane, he said that he used to sneak away from his house to play for tips at the saloons in Laplace as well as hide under a bed at his friend’s house to hear bands practice. When jobs were scarce, Ory and his friends would have parties selling catfish and perch sandwiches for five cents apiece in empty houses and other places they could find. When he was 10, his father bought him his first instrument, a banjo. Ory would take that out to a bridge in Laplace and practice it in his spare time. At age 13 he started his first official band, the Woodland Band that continued to play picnics and parties. Ory said that he bought their uniforms from street peddlers. STORYVILLE By this time, Ory’s mother had died and his father was an invalid. He was taken care of by his sisters. He also had moved from banjo to guitar and was learning trombone. One of his formative experiences occurred when he was 14 and his sister took him to New Orleans to buy a new trombone.

He had just bought a trombone from Werlein’s and was blowing it outside the store. A strong, brown-skinned man walked up to him and complimented him on his playing. This man then introduced himself as “King” Buddy Bolden and asked him if he wanted to join his band. Ory had to ask his sister who forbade him, saying that he had promised to stay at home until he was 21. Ory obeyed his sister and stayed in Laplace until he came of age. Then, as he said, “I turned 21 at 4:30 in the morning and at 8:00 I was on that train to New Orleans.” This was 1907, when Storyville and other red light districts were hopping with booze, music, and sex. Ory first worked in a sawmill when he came to town, but soon found work in Storyville. His first job was at Pete Lala’s on the corner of Marais and Iberville (then called Customhouse). The bar was filled with hustlers and B-girls (women who got patrons to buy them drinks).

The prostitutes who worked out of the cheap street level apartments called cribs nearby would come in for a break and end up taking tricks back down the street. Three weeks later he sent for his band from Laplace. When they arrived, he rented a wagon, painted his name on the side, and the band would ride around the city playing and advertising its gigs. This later became a popular way of getting one’s name out to the public, but Ory was the first one to do this. The band started getting gigs, and, as musician Pops Foster recalled, “took New Orleans by storm.” According to Foster, up until that point the Olympia was the best band in town, but Ory’s band was “smoother and more polished than the New Orleans bands. They had good readers in the band.” Ory’s Woodland Band played all over town. They worked at such nightspots as the Globe Hall, Economy Hall, Funky Butt Hall, and the Palm Gardens. One place they played was Lincoln Park where the promoter Buddy Bottley would go up in a hot air balloon. Bottley gave Ory his nickname by calling him “Kid” Ory on a sign at the park.

As an explanation, Bottley told Ory, “It’s what the girls call you. You’re the ‘Kid’ from now on.” During the heady days of Storyville, Ory had many of New Orleans’ greatest musicians come through his band. Jimmie Noone, Johnny Dodds, Manuel Manetta, Ed “Montudi” Garland, Mutt Carey, and Joe “King” Oliver all shared a stage or parade route in Ory’s band. In fact, when Joe Oliver left the band, it gave Ory an opportunity to give a teenage musician from the Colored Waif’s Home his first job. Apparently Ory first saw Louis Armstrong blowing with the Home’s band in a parade. Ory waited for him and told Armstrong that when he got out he should look him up, and when he did, Ory hired him but not before first ordering Armstrong to buy his first pair of long pants. While in New Orleans, Kid Ory perfected his style of playing that became known as the “tailgating style.” It was called that because when the band played on wagons going around town, the trombone player always sat on the tailgate of the wagon next to the bass player.

It consisted of the trombone player blowing notes underneath the melodies of the trumpet and clarinet to add an extra rhythm to the song. Ory would do this and add vocal elements such as barks and shouts to his playing to complement the other parts. This way of playing would become ubiquitous as too many trombone players to count took Ory’s innovations and imitated them or used them in their own ways. His influence in this way cannot be overemphasized. LOS ANGELES Ory left New Orleans for California in 1919. Storyville had been closed, and Ory had a run-in with the owner of Pete Lala’s club. Ory had been promoting dances at Economy Hall, and the owner didn’t like the competition, so according to Ory, “he sent 50 cops to go to his dances and run the customers away.” Ory’s health also was poor, and he thought that it might improve with a different climate. Upon reaching Los Angeles, Ory and his band played on a wagon driving up and down Central Avenue, the main black club strip, to advertise his band’s services. People in L.A. had heard of him from folks in Louisiana, so he quickly found work.

He sent for Armstrong, but Armstrong had already joined King Oliver’s band in Chicago. As Ory’s bandmate Alfred Williams tells it, “People went wild over the music.” Williams remembers Ory’s band played several different clubs, but had to keep moving because many of the clubs would get busted regularly for selling bootleg liquor or offending the police by allowing people of mixed race to dance together. Ory’s band traveled up and down the coast for gigs in San Francisco and Oakland. During an engagement in Oakland, the Spike Brothers, who owned a club in Los Angeles where Ory had played, called Ory and asked him to come and record for their Sunshine Label in Santa Monica. This was 1921. Ory and his band made the trek to a small room in Santa Monica where they recorded six songs including “Ory’s Creole Trombone,”“Society Blues”and “Someday Sweetheart.”Ory recalled that they “made them all in one day. We made six sides so quickly that we did not know who was there, playing each tune just once.

We got 15 or 20 dollars apiece and expenses for traveling.” Dirk Johnson played clarinet, and, according to Ory, “he patted his feet so loud that we had to put a pillow under his feet, and the pillow wouldn’t do, so we got a mattress.” These records became the first songs ever issued by a group of African-American musicians. A couple of years later, Ory and his band became the first African-American band to broadcast on the radio in 1923. These opportunities kept Ory in California despite periodic offers from King Oliver to come and join his band in Chicago. However, Ory couldn’t resist the request of Louis Armstrong to travel to Chicago and play on the Hot 5 sessions, so he moved east in 1925. CHICAGO Ory played on many of the Armstrong’s Hot 5 and Hot 7 sessions. Much has been written about these epoch recordings. It suffices to say that not only did they provide the blueprint from which jazz has been constructed due to their group improvisations and virtuoso soloists, but they are also one of the greatest artistic achievements in the history of Western culture.

Ory’s tailgating style was featured in many of the tunes and in turn they influenced countless trombonists. Also, several of Ory’s compositions were recorded, including his most famous composition, “Muskrat Ramble,” and another version of “Ory’s Creole Trombone.” Ory stayed in Chicago for several years. He not only made his fame playing with Armstrong, but he also played with Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers and King Oliver’s Savannah Syncopators. Chicago at that point was almost as wide open as Storyville had been. Ory recalls working the Savoy Ballroom, the Greystone Ballroom and assorted gangster joints where the two great syndicate rivals, Al Capone and Bugsy Moran, would come in at the same time and sit at opposite ends of the club. As the Depression set in and tastes changed from hot New Orleans jazz to swing, Ory moved back to California. He found work harder and harder to find, so he finally retired in 1933. For the rest of decade he worked as a mail clerk and ran a chicken farm with his brother in Los Angeles.

However, his reputation stayed alive as several swing bands recorded version of “Muskrat Ramble” and “Savoy Blues.” As the Depression ended and the 1940s began, a renewed interest in New Orleans jazz arose. Trumpeter Bunk Johnson had been “rediscovered” and clarinetist George Lewis had started recording again. Kid Ory started playing some infrequent dates with Barney Bigard and after that some pick-up gigs playing bass because there was not a place for a trombone in the small combos of the day. In 1944 Orson Welles enlisted a writer/record shop owner named Marili Morden to find a genuine New Orleans band for his radio programs. Morden found several musicians in the Los Angeles area including Ory, Ed Garland, Jimmy Noone, Mutt Carey, and Armstrong drummer Zutty Singleton. Welles only anticipated that the band would broadcast for a week, but letters and phone calls from fans led to a three-month stay on the airwaves. Ory took over as the leader, called the band “Kid Ory’s Creole Jazz Band,” and recorded for the Crescent and Jazzman labels.

These recordings proved to be immensely popular, fueling the rebirth of traditional New Orleans jazz that grew throughout the late 1940s and 1950s. Ory kept the band together despite numerous personnel changes. His concert tours took him all over the U.S., England, and the European continent. He also appeared in several movies including New Orleans and The Benny Goodman Story. A career highlight occurred in 1957 with an appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival. FIXIN’ TO DIE By the mid-1960s, Kid Ory’s age caught up with him, and he retired in 1966 and moved to Honolulu. He made a triumphant appearance back in New Orleans for the Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1971. He was met at the airport by a brass band and he played at Municipal Auditorium. It was his first visit to the Crescent City since he left 52 years before. His return was a great success, and after it he returned to Hawaii, where he passed away at age 86 in 1973 of pneumonia and heart failure.

More recently, Kid Ory’s name has been in the news as his daughter, Babette, has filed a lawsuit against ’60s counter-culture hero Country Joe McDonald. Babette Ory maintains that McDonald’s ’60s anthem “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die-Rag” (“One, Two, Three, Four/What are we fighting for/Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn/Next stop is Vietnam”) is a direct and deliberate theft and copyright infringement of Ory’s “Muskrat Ramble.” As a favor, McDonald originally assigned the song’s publishing rights to Chris Strachwitz’s Music Company, a move that saved Strachwitz’s fledgling Arhoolie Records from bankruptcy. At the time of this article, the suit is still in the California court system. According to a 1960 interview with Ory, the larceny of his compositions was nothing new: “Nick LaRocca and those boys used to stand on the walkways out at Lake Pontchartrain and pick up everything we were doing. I saw them. They played a lot of old New Orleans tunes and put their names on ’em.

Like ‘Tiger Rag.’” Ory’s daughter is organizing a return of Ory’s body to New Orleans from Los Angeles for burial in either St. Louis Cemetery #1 or #3. She is planning this for the 2003 French Quarter Festival and the body will arrive aboard the same train car used to transport the remains of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to his funeral in 1945. The Complete Kid Ory Verve Sessions (Mosaic Records) Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers (5 CDs) (JSP Records) Jelly Roll Morton: The Chicago Years 1926-1928 (Louisiana Red Hot Records) Louis Armstrong: The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings (4 CDs) (Columbia/Legacy) Louis Armstrong Hot Fives and Hot Sevens (4 CDs) (JSP Records) The Historical Evolution of the Jazz Trombone: Part One Introduction Although the trombone is less often heard as a solo instrument, many legendary performers have left distinctive marks on the history of jazz. Each of these trombonists is indebted to earlier trombonists and other musicians who influenced the styles of jazz trombone.

This line of development can be traced from early Dixieland trombonists, such as Kid Ory and Miff Mole to today's original sounding trombonists Ray Anderson and Craig Harris. Throughout the history and evolution of jazz, important trombonists influence the musicians who follow with developments in harmony, melody, rhythm, and technique. This is the first part of a series of articles that will cover this line of influences from the earliest years of jazz to the present day. Since it is impossible to cover all the great jazz trombonists, this document will instead focus on the most influential players. As many trombonists influenced more than one generation of new musicians, while performing in more than one style of jazz, a strict line of development is impossible. "Dixieland" In the early 1900s to the 1920s a style of music developed in New Orleans spread to other parts of the country, particularly Chicago. This new music, often labeled as Dixieland, was the first example of what is generally classified as "jazz." Dixieland jazz was performed by smaller groups, usually for dancing purposes.

The band--usually a trombonist, cornetist, clarinetist, bass instrument (either a tuba or double bass), chordal instrument (either a banjo or piano), and a drummer--would advertise their dance by marching in parades or playing in a wagon pulled around the street of New Orleans. The trombonist, in order to have enough room to maneuver his slide, would sit at the back of the wagon, giving the name "tailgate trombone" to this style. Dixieland was primarily improvised music. The trombone would either outline the chords by playing something similar to a tuba or bass, or--more likely--play a countermelody to the cornet. The most striking feature of the countermelody was the glissandos and other raucous effects that could be produced with the slide trombone. While the trombonist was improvising a countermelody, the clarinetist would play an obligato line above the cornet melody. The rhythm section supported these three separate lines with a march-like beat.

Trombone soloists in these early jazz bands used lots of glissandos and growls, with less subtlety than the cornet and clarinet solos. Edward "Kid" Ory Perhaps the most well known of the tailgate trombonists was Edward "Kid" Ory. Born in Louisiana in 1886, Ory began his musical career around 1910 in New Orleans. His style and large rough tone became the epitome of a good Dixieland sound. Ory attacked his notes percussively and often utilized glissandos, growls, and smears. His solos were simple melodically and harmonically--most often just a few repeated notes--but he played with a raw and energetic quality that made him one of the most feared musicians when it came to contests between the bands of New Orleans. In 1925 Ory was easily coaxed to Chicago when asked by King Oliver to join his band with the first genius of jazz, Louis Armstrong, on trumpet. Ory's association with Armstrong would later give him immortality through his playing on the classic recordings of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven.

Through 1925 to 1932 Ory played with other jazz greats such as Dave Peyton, Jelly Roll Morton and Ma Rainey. 1933 began a nine year period of almost no musical production for Ory. He moved back to California to take over his brother's chicken farm and played only sporadically. By 1942, however, he started playing with Barney Brigard's band and got swept up in the 1940s revival of traditional Dixieland jazz. He continued to lead his own group, Kid Ory's Creole Jazz Band, throughout the 1950s. Eventually ill health forced Ory to move to Hawaii in 1961, where he played occasionally. Ory stopped playing completely in 1971 due to his health, and in 1973 he died of pneumonia and heart failure. The following transcription of Ory's solo on "When the Saints Go Marching In" is a good example of his style. Throughout the solo Ory uses the glissandos and growls that he is known for. Ory also employs a fast vibrato that begins almost as soon as the note is played.

These are all musical devices that were commonly used by trombonists of the Dixieland era. This solo is simple harmonically and melodically. The second chorus is a virtual repeat of the first chorus. Many times Ory simply outlines the chord triad, such as measures 7, 12, 23, and 28. He also plays the minor third (A flat) in measures 4 and 20, which is one of the so called "blue notes" of the blues scale (The blues scale in the key of A flat is: A flat, C flat, D flat, D natural, E flat, and G flat. The sound of the C flat on an A flat triad is one of the blue notes.). This use of the C flat gives these measures a blues-like sound. Miff Mole Miff Mole, born Irving Milfred Mole in 1898, was perhaps stylistically the opposite of Kid Ory. Although both played in the Dixieland format, Ory's style was boisterous and rough, Mole's was more technical with a brighter sound. Mole also avoided the glissandos and growls that Ory favored.

Mole's first contact with jazz came through the popular recordings of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the first recorded examples of this music, which included Edwin "Eddie" Edwards on trombone. Fascinated with the new sound, Mole attended performances in New York and quickly began to imitate what he heard. Along with a group of other New York musicians, Mole recorded hundreds of tunes under many different names, including the Original Memphis Five and Ladd's Black Aces (named as a marketing ploy for the black population). After working with many other groups, including Charlie Randall and the Abe Lyman Orchestra he began a long association with cornetist Red Nichols in 1925. A five-year partnership produced many excellent bands under various names such as Red Nichols & His Five Pennies and Miff Mole & and His Little Molers. During this time, Mole also became the trombonist with the studio band of radio station WOR and worked many recording sessions at the NBC studios. In 1938 Mole joined the enormously popular Paul Whiteman Orchestra and played with the group for two years until poor health forced him to leave.

After leaving Whiteman, he played part time for the Benny Goodman Orchestra. The last few years of Mole's life were frustrating ones for Mole. Even though he had founded a new trend in jazz trombone, and had a great influence on many trombonists in the 1920s, the listening public had begun to listen to a new style in jazz known as Swing. There are many more trombonists who deserve mention for their work in the Dixieland style. Many, such as Freddie Assunto of the Dukes of Dixieland and Turk Murphy, got their start in the Dixieland revival of the 1940s. Many others, such as Vic Dickenson and J. C. Higginbotham were known for performing both in Dixieland and Swing jazz styles. Kid Ory, "tailgate" trombonist & composer | African American Registry Kid Ory, "tailgate" trombonist & composer Kid Ory Date: Sat, 1886-12-25 On this date Kid Ory was born in 1886. He was an African American trombonist and composer. Edward Ory was born in LaPlace, Louisiana.

As a child, he began to make music on homemade instruments. By 1911, he was leading one of the best-known bands in New Orleans. Among its members at various times were several musicians who later were highly influential in jazz development, including Sidney Bechet, Mutt Carey, Jimmy Noone, King Oliver, and Louis Armstrong. In 1919, Ory moved to California, forming a new band in Los Angeles. After five years he joined King Oliver in Chicago and by the end of the 1920s had become a prolific jazz recording artist. He played with King Oliver's Dixie Syncopators, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers. In 1930, Ory retired from music to run a successful chicken farm, but on his comeback in 1939 he enjoyed even greater success. He worked with clarinetist Barney Bigard and trumpeter Bunk Johnson (1943), and his motion-picture credits include Crossfire, New Orleans, and The Benny Goodman Story. Ory was perhaps the first musician to codify, purely by precept, the role of the trombone in classic three-part contrapuntal jazz improvisation.

Ory is often remembered as a "tailgate" trombonist, one whose style of playing fills in, or supports, other band instruments and is reminiscent of the styles of pre-jazz ragtime bands and cakewalk bands. His most outstanding jazz composition was "Muskrat Ramble." Edward Kid Ory died Jan. 23, 1973, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Reference: A Century of Jazz, by Roy Carr Da Capo Press, New York Copyright 1997 Kid Ory | Biography & History | AllMusic google+ Artist Biography by Scott Yanow Kid Ory was one of the great New Orleans pioneers, an early trombonist who virtually defined the "tailgate" style (using his horn to play rhythmic bass lines in the front line behind the trumpet and clarinet) and who was fortunate enough to last through the lean years so he could make a major comeback in the mid-'40s. Originally a banjoist, Ory soon switched to trombone and by 1911 was leading a popular band in New Orleans.

Among his trumpeters during the next eight years were Mutt Carey , King Oliver and a young Louis Armstrong and his clarinetists included Johnny Dodds , Sidney Bechet , and Jimmie Noone . In 1919, Ory moved to California and in 1922 (possibly 1921) recorded the first two titles by a Black New Orleans jazz band ("Ory's Creole Trombone" and "Society Blues") under the band title of Spike's Seven Pods of Pepper Orchestra. In 1925 he moved to Chicago, played regularly with King Oliver , and recorded many classic sides with Oliver , Louis Armstrong (in his Hot Five and Seven), and Jelly Roll Morton , among others. The definitive New Orleans trombonist of the 1920s, Ory (whose "Muskrat Ramble" became a standard) was mostly out of music after 1930, running a chicken ranch with his brother. However in 1942 he was persuaded to return, and after a stint with Barney Bigard's group, he formed his own band.

Ory 's group was featured on Orson Welles ' radio show in 1944 and the publicity made it possible for the band to catch on. The New Orleans revival was in full swing and Ory (whose group included trumpeter Mutt Carey and clarinetists Omer Simeon or Darnell Howard ) was still in prime form. He appeared in the 1946 film New Orleans (and later on in The Benny Goodman Story) and worked steadily in Los Angeles. After Mutt Carey departed in 1948, Ory used Teddy Buckner, Marty Marsala , Alvin Alcorn (the perfect musician for his group), and Red Allen on trumpets and his Dixieland bands always boasted high musicianship (even with the leader's purposely primitive style) and a consistent level of excitement. They recorded regularly (most notably for Good Time Jazz) up to 1960 by which time Ory (already 73) was cutting back on his activities. He retired altogether in 1966, moving to Hawaii.

Question: What instrument was played by jazz musician (Edward) Kid Ory?
Answer: Trombone